Julian Assange required staff to sign agreement with $20M penalty for talking out of turn

ITworld|May 13, 2011

WikiLeaks, whose founder and spokesperson dramatically and indignantly defends the its right to do what it wants with the secret information of other organizations, is so defensive about controlling its own information that staffers have to agree to gag orders with penalties as high as $20 million for talking out of turn.

The penalty for violating the secrecy agreement – which NewStatesman describes as unenforceable even under British laws that are much more friendly toward such restrictions than those in the U.S. – is 12 million pounds ($19.5 million).

It would be a conceptual and moral reach, but it might be possible to justify rules forbidding staff from revealing leaked information in a group like WikiLeaks – if only to help it stick to careful schedules for release of secret documents that help demonstrate that they're accurate.

That would never be acceptable for any journalism organization or, in most cases, any organization whose primary interest is in revealing dirty secrets as quickly as possible.

Given the chancy environment of international law, diplomacy and espionage, it's possible to assemble some defense of part of the gag order, though only if it's clear the information is coming out anyway, not being hoarded for reasons unknown, as was the case with Bank of America documents leaked to WikiLeaks and eventually published by Anonymous.

Trying to prevent staffers from talking about anything newsworthy – meaning anything interesting about the organization, from what Julian Assange is really like to work with to whether he's as big a jerk as he seems to be – is flat out censorship.

It demonstrates a lack of respect for the judgment and ethics of staffers and, worse, a Steve-Jobs-like obsession with control over information and with making not the mission of the organization, but the boss himself the focus of all the coverage about it.

I still believe that's true, but the more that came out about the charges and Assange's relationships with those around him, the more it became clear that his organization may be making important contributions to the global political discussion, but that it was being run by a guy who didn't mind hurting those around him for his own aggrandizement and abandoning them to pay the consequences.